Thomas Rhiel created this stunning, colorful map of all of Brooklyn’s 320,000+ buildings. He plotted and shaded each of them according to its year of construction. The result is a snapshot of Brooklyn’s evolution, revealing how development has rippled across certain neighborhoods while leaving some pockets unchanged for decades, even centuries.

Shocking infographics on the distribution of wealth in America, highlighting both the inequality and the difference between our perception of inequality and the actual numbers. The reality is often not what we think it is.

The fine folks of data visualization.ch put together a selection of data visualization tools that they use the most and that they enjoy working with. It includes libraries for plotting data on maps, frameworks for creating charts, graphs and diagrams and tools to simplify the handling of data. Even if you’re not into programming, you’ll find applications that can be used without writing one single line of code. They will keep this list as a living repository and add / remove things as technology develops. YES!

My sister pointed me to the Scale of the Univserse by Cary Huang. Definitely impressive to see scale proportions visualized like that. (But the illustration snob in me admits I’d see these illustrations done by someone like Julia Rothman)

Artist Aaron Koblin takes vast amounts of data — and at times vast numbers of people — and weaves them into stunning visualizations. From elegant lines tracing airline flights to landscapes of cell phone data, from a Johnny Cash video assembled from crowd-sourced drawings to the “Wilderness Downtown” video that customizes for the user, his works brilliantly explore how modern technology can make us more human. Watch his TED Talk below.

In asking [100] people, locals and tourists alike, what made them happy, Catherine Young realized that one of the most universal and clearest ways to record their responses was to ask them to draw what made them happy. Drawing is one of the earliest skills we learn; its basic elements are comprehensible to people of all ages, cultures and nations. Catherine reasoned that if people knew that they were happy, they should be able to identify the source and moreover, visually embody this joy.

Typefaces of the World is a poster Shelby White created to show the typefaces that are most commonly used in a lot of today’s design. The poster includes information for each typefaces such as the year it was made, the location and the typographer. These 50 typefaces were chosen based on popularity and usefulness in present design. It was by mere coincidence that the typefaces were nearly split 50/50 between Europe and the United States. But it does show that the most prominent locations for typographers were in these areas.

What a beauty! I would love to hang one of these in my studio. Shelby says he is toying with the idea of adding a store to his site. Let’s hope he does soon! Typefaces of the World! Wishlisted!